'Sub-scale' biz offloaded to tech services wannabe

New York-listed Systemax last night confirmed the bid to the stock exchange, the most significant buy it has made in Europe - where it trades as Misco - since the acquisition of WStore some years back.

"The European IT market is a large fragmented market place that presents tremendous opportunity for growth," said Richard Leeds, CEO at Systemax.

The US firm already has a foothold in the Netherlands but Leeds talked up the margin-boosting potential of this deal, which adds remote network monitoring, logistics and assembly, maintenance and managed print services.

According to results from SCC parent Rigby Holdings, the Dutch reseller operation grew 20.2 per cent to €103.7m in the year to 31 March 2013, despite being "impacted by the dis-synergies" of the SDG distie arm disposal.

The division restructured, getting rid of excess back office and logistics staff and the warehouse was transferred to SDG's new parent, Tech Data.

The exit in Netherlands leaves SCC with continental operation in France, Spain, and Romania as it also tries to beef up the serves organisation, which accounted for £114.5m of revenues in the same fiscal '13 period.

"Following the sale of our distribution interests in 2012, the Dutch business was sub-scale for SCC's stated objective of being a market leader in its core geographies," said SCC CEO James Rigby in a prepared statement.

"This sale allow SCC to focus on its core markets and this will be further demonstrated with strategic and niche acquisitions during 2014," he added.

The deal could close later this quarter but first is subject to approval by the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets. ®